Global Payments: SWIFT extends gpi to all cross border payments

WELLINGTON: The SWIFT Community is to universally adopt the gpi service, in a move which will see all 10,000 banks on SWIFT’s global network use the global payments innovation service (gpi) for cross border payments.

SWIFT is a global member owned cooperative and the world’s leading provider of secure financial messaging services.

The SWIFT global payments innovation (SWIFT gpi) is the largest change in cross-border payments over the last 30 years and is the new standard.

The decision to move to universal gpi adoption has been taken against the backdrop of the rapid success and unexpectedly fast adoption rate of gpi to date. The service has already been taken up and is being promoted by 49 of the world’s top 50 banks.

Headquartered in Belgium, SWIFT’s international governance and oversight reinforces the neutral, global character of its cooperative structure

With the full support of the SWIFT board, representing the entire SWIFT community, this decision will drive global take-up of gpi, so that by the end of 2020 every bank on the network is able to offer same day end-to-end delivery with full tracking and transparency, throughout the payment chain.

Yawar Shah, Chairman of SWIFT said: “The gpi service has been designed, developed and deployed in record time, and is already radically transforming the cross-border payments experience. Unmatched in scale, no other service has been able to safely deliver hundreds of billions of dollars in payments around the world in minutes or seconds. The time is now right to accelerate the adoption of gpi, ensuring that all banks on the network adopt it. The Board has therefore endorsed the network-wide implementation of gpi.”

Luc Meurant, SWIFT’s Chief Marketing Officer, said: “With gpi we are rolling out an ambitious global programme involving all the banks, currencies, and routes on the network, to ensure global adoption by end 2020. This move to accelerate adoption and extend the dramatic improvements being afforded by gpi will be transformative for the industry and its end customers.”

To assist the smaller or more occasional users, which collectively account for a very small percentage of cross border payments, SWIFT will introduce and support these users in implementing a basic gpi service, enabling all payments to and from these banks to receive full gpi treatment throughout the payment chain.

Launched in early 2017, gpi already accounts for 25% of SWIFT cross-border payment traffic. More than 100 billion USD in SWIFT gpi messages is sent every day, enabling payments to be credited to end beneficiaries within minutes – many within seconds.

Since going live, SWIFT gpi has seen rapid adoption with more than 180 banks already signed up to the gpi service. The rapid and widespread adoption of SWIFT gpi has been driven by end-customer demand for a faster, more transparent cross-border payments service, improved remittance information and predictability.

Nearly 50% of gpi payments are completed and credited to end beneficiaries’ accounts in less than 30 minutes, enabling banks to deliver a much enhanced service to their customers.

To date, 35 million gpi payments have been processed, and hundreds of thousands of payments are being sent daily across 450 country corridors, in more than 100 currencies.

In major corridors, such as USA-China, gpi already accounts for nearly 50% of payment traffic.

By Major Sunil Shetty (SM) Retd
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